Authorities thought a psychologist was a violent abuser but let him work with children for months

A psychologist worked with children for six months while Victorian authorities believed he was a violent domestic abuser accused of strangling, headbutting and being in a relationship with a minor.

The man was innocent — the victim of a police bungle over someone else with the same name — but says the case is an indictment of the system meant to protect the state’s most vulnerable.

Working with children checks are under the spotlight.Credit: Michael Howard

The psychologist, whom The Age has chosen not to name for legal reasons, came forward over fears the system failure exposed an unacceptable safety risk while Victoria reels from the case of alleged childcare paedophile Joshua Brown.

“I was still able to work with children for up to six months while they thought I was a person that clearly may have posed a risk to children,” the psychologist said.

The man applied for a working with children clearance and was able to work with minors in Victoria while his application was pending in 2021.

Six months later, he was issued with an interim exclusion order with a detailed list of alleged violent offending that barred him from working with children.

Childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown, 26, has been accused of child sex abuse.

The Department of Justice and Community Safety, which had responsibility for working with children checks until the Department of Government Services was established in 2023, also served the notice on his employer.

The psychologist lost two days’ work while he cleared his name.

Correspondence obtained by The Age shows police had confused him with someone else who shares the same first and last names as well as the same birthdate, and had shared the wrong file with working with children authorities.

The other man was accused of headbutting, strangling, threatening to kill a pet, and of repeatedly breaching family violence intervention orders, among other allegations and offending over years. The police file said the man had been in a relationship with a younger woman for 10 years, which, given their ages, suggested it had begun when she was a child, though there were no criminal charges listed related to that.

“I am a psychologist that through my work frequently supports victims of the types of crimes I am being accused of in these letters,” the psychologist wrote in his complaints to the Department of Justice and Community Safety and to Victoria Police.

The case of mistaken identity resulted in apologies and token compensation from the department and Victoria Police, and a referral to the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner for the privacy breach.

“We … acknowledge that this experience was not up to the standards the public rightly expect of our agency,” then-department deputy secretary of police, fines and crime prevention Corri McKenzie wrote in response to his complaint in 2022.

Department correspondence shows the psychologist’s application took more than twice as long to finalise than the average wait, which in 2021 was 12 weeks.

Allowing people to work while a clearance check was pending for so many months put vulnerable children at risk, he said. He suggested there be mandated timelines for clearance checks to be completed.

“But clearly, the easiest thing to do here and the cheapest thing to do is to let pending applications go for as long as they take, all the while children could be being abused.”

Victoria Police and the Department of Government Services did not directly respond when asked whether they agreed the timeline showed a possible gap for exploitation.

The force, which referred the mix-up to the Professional Standards Command for investigation, reminded officers at the time to refer to photo identification to ensure they have the correct file.

“Professional Standards Command detectives have investigated following an incident in 2021 where an incorrect profile was provided to the Department of Justice in relation to a working with children application,” a police spokeswoman said in a statement. “This was an isolated incident, and updated procedures have now been put into place.”

The Department of Government Services said the way information was shared between its worker screening unit and Victoria Police had been updated since 2021 but otherwise declined to comment.

Working with children checks will be top of the agenda at a standing council of the country’s top lawmakers next month. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended a nationally consistent working with children scheme in 2015.

The Victorian Ombudsman recommended in 2022 that working with children checks should be expanded beyond a person’s criminal history to account for any other relevant information. The state government earlier this year agreed the system needed to be updated and, in response to Brown’s alleged sexual abuse, ordered a review into the childcare sector and opportunities for reform.

The government is rolling out a register for childcare workers, which will launch in stages, after difficulties determining which centres Brown had worked at over eight years.

Brown faces 73 charges, including child rape, after the alleged discovery of a cache of child abuse material in May sparked a police investigation into the 26-year-old.

The Age has previously revealed the watchdog charged with overseeing safety in the childcare sector – the Education Department’s Quality Assessment and Regulation Division – had recorded a 45 per cent increase in complaints about providers since 2018, but that enforcement action had fallen 67 per cent over the same period.

Victoria’s former commissioner for children and young people had warned the government three years ago that “children will be abused” if its oversight scheme did not get a funding boost.

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